From the creators of AI War: Fleet Command comes an all-new grand strategy title with turn-based tactical combat, set in a deep simulation of an entire solar system and its billions of inhabitants. You are the last of a murdered race, determined to unify or destroy the 8 others.

2. joulukuu, 2014

Version 2.008 is the latest in a series of post-expansion-release hotfixes. We've been posting about these on our forums, but individually these releases weren't really worth doing a full blog/announcement post about. So let's talk about these cumulatively!

First of all, for those who have been following along already, here's what is new in the very latest release:

If you have been waiting for that setting that allows your dispatches to give you a warning whenever a race attacks another, your wait is now over!

The selling of raw resources in Betrayal mode is back, just now at a really discounted rate compared to the other modes.

Several changes have been made that will keep the AI acting a bit more appropriately when it comes to ground invasions.

But what else has been going on since 2.0, for those who haven't been following?

Well, naturally, the very first thing that happened after launch of the expansion is that a couple of clever souls figured out a way to trivialize Betrayal mode by using a bumrush tactic that nobody had tried up until that point. So there was much balance work and AI work and so on done around making that no longer an exploit. Betrayal mode got even more interesting as a result, even for those not using that tactic.

Obscura Discs aren't so common anymore during battles with the Obscura, because they were kind of obnoxious when found en masse.

In Betrayal mode, when you're defending yourself you no longer earn such a negative influence with other races.

Assassins now are only a standard-mode mechanic. They only really made good sense there, and were particularly unbalancing on Betrayal mode.

The ratio of number of flagships in combat to "base power" of an armada has decreased, meaning that you can't wipe out whole armadas quite so easily in combat mode.

A lot of smaller bugfixes.

Enjoy!

This is a standard update that you can download through the in-game updater, or if you have Steam it will automatically update it for you. To force Steam to download it faster, just restart Steam and it will do so.

14. marraskuu, 2014

The expansion includes 17 new ships, 2 new solar system backgrounds, 32 new abilities, 19 new achievements, 13 new music tracks and 5 new quests. It also introduces two completely different ways to play the game -- Betrayal and Invasion:

Betrayal Mode reverses the usual game flow, making you a full planetary power trying to achieve solar domination -- adding a new layer of 4X onto the existing game. You gain the ability to command armadas and ground troops, and the meaning behind political deals is very much shifted. Rather than working toward unity, you attempt to destroy all your foes through subterfuge, war, and temporary alliances.

Invasion Mode sees you working with the other races to survive slaughter by a grave new threat, putting yet another major spin on things. Forming the federation isn't a priority when you are trying to keep a terror from consuming the entire system.

The Last Federation 2.0 arrives alongside the Betrayed Hope expansion this week as well. Here's what's been added or improved upon between 1.0 and this new release:

- Tons of improvements to GUI clarity, explanatory tooltips, etc.
- Auto-resolve option for battles.
- Permadeath made optional (and off by default).
- Awesome new ship graphics for during battles.
- New Burlust "Turmoil" mechanic.
- New ways to persuade races to join the federation.
- New actions that NPC-races take when it seems appropriate to them.
- Six new quests.
- Added player actions to support a ground invasions, oppose them, or simply start bombing stuff independently.
- Added the Ark and the Mire, two randomly seeded unique buildings that help make each game different.
- Major improvements to how RCI, Attitude, and Influence numbers work so that they make more sense to the player.
- Major revisions to widely-disliked missions like "Clean up AFA", "Deliver Spacefaring Technology", etc.
- Radical shifts to solar map pacing and many revisions to how actions work to increase player agency.
- New moddable "Bullet Pattern" engine that allows some really crazy new behaviors for enemy shots. Tons of new and revised bullet patterns.
- You can now do practice combats at the black market to try out tactics or just enjoy blowing up tons of ships.
- Substantial CPU/GPU performance improvements.
- Rebalancing both in combat and on the solar map.
- Multitudinous bugfixes.

For those interested in delving deeper, the full release notes from version 1.0 to 2.0 total more than 61,000 words.

Tietoja pelistä

Extremely deep simulation of an entire solar system and its billions of inhabitants. Even just watching everything unfold in Observer mode is entertaining, as nations rise and fall.

New-player-friendly ramp-up of complexity as you play, which you can disable if you're already a veteran.

Eight races each have very distinct personalities and attributes. Each one even has its own completely unique political system.

Difficulty levels split between the grand strategy and turn-based combat portions of the game, both ranging from quite casual to incredibly hardcore.

Save and reload your game with ease any time, or tough it out in ironman mode.

Composer Pablo Vega's best soundtrack to date, featuring 54 minutes of music and the vocal finale "Lay Down Your Arms."

About The Game

Greetings, Hydral. I will be your computer for this "grand strategy campaign with turn-based tactical combat." I think that's code for "we're going to die."

Our solar system is vast and complicated, and I sense you are a little dimwitted -- so I tell you what, let's start with the simple stuff. Like escaping with this flagship you just hijacked from a bunch of angry robots. That seems important.

Please excuse my impertinence, but I believe you are the last of a murdered race, yes? My records note you Hydrals were the dictators of the solar system, so basically you had it coming. And by "it," I mean the moon that smacked into your homeworld. Hmm. So people really aren't going to like you until they get to know you. Well, only you can use the scattered remnants of advanced Hydral technology, so that's something.

Look, I'm not going to tell you what to do. My understanding is that you're trying to form the solar system's first-and-last unified federation, and that's noble enough. But right now nobody wants that except you, and you've got 8 very diverse, very angry races to either unify or exterminate. So... good luck with that. I'll help how I can.

Järjestelmävaatimukset

Windows

Mac OS X

SteamOS + Linux

Minimum:

OS: Windows XP SP2 or later

Processor: 2.2Ghz CPU

Memory: 2 GB RAM

Graphics: Screen resolution at least 720px high, and 1024px wide.

Hard Drive: 1 GB available space

Minimum:

OS: Mac OSX Intel CPU and "Leopard" 10.5 or later.

Processor: 2.2Ghz CPU

Memory: 2 GB RAM

Graphics: Screen resolution at least 720px high, and 1024px wide.

Hard Drive: 1 GB available space

Minimum:

OS: Ubuntu 10.10 or later, although other unsupported distros may work

Freakin brilliant game about political intrigue and space battles. My first game I saved everyone but the burlusts who were so hated by everyone that they were at continous war with everyone. So i use the skylaxians to spread military technology around to everyone else in the federation which was everyone. This includes the Acutians who hate me with all their robotic hearts, but they are in the fed and the burlusts need to die before i can win. It's 70 years later and the burlust homeworld is about to fall. When all of a sudden the acutians pull out of the federation, and take the burlusts planet while they are weak. Well, I thought to myself, everyone else in the solar system against two planets owned by the acutians, this will be a cakewalk. As it turns out the only people in the Fed who hated the acutians enough to go to war with them were the Pelatians. So i have to spend some 50 years dragging the acutians reputation through mud before everyone finally agrees to go to war with them. Problem is at this point the acutians have finished the tech tree in its entirety largely thanks to the boost I had the skylaxians give them. So begins a long drawn out war of attrition between the alliance and the acutians. After 30 years of war with no visible progress, I decide that I need to finish out my tech tree, so I can actually fight all these assasins the acutians keep sending after me. So I finish out the tech tree taking about a century to do so. Now at this point i had essntially gotten infinite money. So i thought to myself how will i kill the acutians when they keep breeding like rabbits. Then it hit me. I'll just pay the evucks a crap-ton of money to poison the environment and ruin the medical capablities of the Acutians with their probes. So a few million later and the acutians planets are cesspools of disease. At which point a virus springs up. I then hire a small army of 60 bioterrorists to infect every last acutian with this virus. 5 years later the acutians are dead, and I win the game. Great game with nearly an infinite number of options. No two games will ever be the same.

After playing for 32 hours and only jsut now beating this game for hte first time, I can say without a doubt that getting this game is definitely worth the time. ONE play session lasted me for a full 8 hours, unlike Civ, You seriously cannot rush this game, atleast not when new like I am.

If you're worried if the game's fun, don't, I enjoyed every minute, when i wasn't getting upset, crying, almost internally dying at my own stupidity as the game screwed me a good 6 times each.

This game is very rather unique in it's own way, I'm fairly sure you won't find another like it for years to come.

You will get your money's worth in this game. Despite the looks, I love this game almost as much as Civ 2: Test of Time, my all-time favorite.

The feeling you'll get when you beat the game for the first time is even better than killing a hard Dark Souls 1 boss. The bliss I am now feeling is... beyond words right now.

In the game's current state, it is now actually decently easy to play in comparison to past versions, if before wasn't a good time to get it, now's good.

The game itself is a clever blend of strategy and shooter, seeming ot be able to go from Real-Time strategy game with a "galaxy" map and a pause button, then go into battle and it's more like Demonstar, only a turn-based, tactical, strategic shooter version in combat.

Combat is simple, but complicated at the same time, with just enough to not be too much to new players.

The game has you trying to unite a system composed to 8 civilizations, all crowded together, in an alliance. Each race has their own ideals and even their own way of doing things and personalities, no two races are the same, and that's where the challenge comes from.

A couple will always pick a fight, two or three will always be technologically ahead, there is a rather weak race who is easy to get in good terms with ofcourse, but everybody is different.

There's so much to do in this game, all that one really needs to do is find what they need to do and do it.

The soundtrack and art design is simply wonderful, I personally love it, now that races will be on randomized planets, it makes it even better.

The tutorial is Very well done with new players directly in mind as it explains EVERYTHING at an even pace, and does so in-depth aswell, unlike many other games on Steam today.There is no tutorial level thankfully, the tutorial itself is integrated into hte game itself, and entries can be called upon later in the menu, later in the game if you've missed how to change power levels on your ship, or start making the federation.

Beating this game for the first time on the lowest of difficulties gave me a feeling that not even beating Dark Souls 2's bosses gave me.

Ultimately, this game gets a 7/10 in my books; I can't describe it, it's just this game is so nicely done in every way, it oozes creativity, quality and it is clear the Developer has put their heart into making this game.

Another game with a bizzare amount of support from the developer. He (it's a one man show) is in constant communication with the players, taking their advice and just... trying it out. The game is much better for it, but it changes DRASTICALLY every few months becaue he's constantly laboring to improve it. Single player only, but this can be a great way to spend your time.

I bought the game impulsively because of the pitching.Allow me to explain my experience with the game like a story, so that I can make clear why I don't recommend it (warning: this is bound to contain minor spoilers):

First thing I face is the intro music of the game; very good music, it gave a good first impression. I always try to start custom maps in games, so I tried to do that in my first try, and I got a popup suggesting I try QuickPlay instead. I took the advice. Then came the picture of the hydra and the story of what happened to you, what are you doing and why are you doing it. I have a weakness for mythological monsters so the idea of playing a space hydra was just too cool to miss.

Unfortunately, the game's use the word "race" and the typical "-ian" ending for their names (Acurian, Peltarian, etc)) gave me the impression the game's lore would be very cheesy (just like in games like Galactic Civilizations and Master of Orion, which were enjoyable but definitely cheesy story-wise). All according to my prediction, the game presented good-old mostly anthropomorphic aliens (even the completely robotic race had an unnecesarily human body), with a very juvenile view of politics, "economy" and intrigue; the lore was more or less a repetition of old soft sci-fi tropes, nothing special.

What could have been Mount and Blade in space, turned out to be mostly a game of Spreadsheet Commander; even though the game does have unique mechanics for each "race", for influence and credit gain, it is still just 2 abstract and lifeless concepts that you are trading back and forth: credit, and influence. And even beneath this apparent layer of complexity the game _feels_ just like the same in every planet. The purported "Grand Strategy" element of the game didn't get to play out. But man was the music catchy.

I didn't get to enjoy trade or cooperation or diplomacy, it really, really felt like Spreadsheet Commander for the short time I got myself to endure it.

And then comes the combat... I will skip it, I don't even want to explain it, but it's really mediocre. It's fun the first few times but, I just can't get myself to see anything interesting about playing turn-based combat with a single ship; and maybe in the future you get to do more interesting things with other ships, but I will quote the very game's Logbook here "in battle, you just have You and whatever allies you managed to get, against your enemies", and when I fought enemies with allies by my side, I still could only pilot my own ship. So I'm going to assume the game will always only let you pilot or give orders to your own ship; this is hardly a "Grand Strategy" combat style. I consider the combat system so mediocre, that the game would've been better without it; it could be replaced with an abstracted combat method, in the Spreadsheet Commander spirit that the rest of the game took.

Do I think the game has no merit at all?, No, I think it has some, but I'm very picky with games, and this game just couldn't get me hooked. But the music is really good, and so is the art. So... I will just pretend I paid for a music album and a nice hydra picture and leave it at that.

Also, so you can get an idea of what games I enjoy (and you can tell whether to trust my taste or not):Mount and Blade: > 500 hoursCrusader Kings II: > 100 (this game is quite the map-painting simulator, but it had <something> that made it feel a little more than that, and so it did get me hooked).Civilization V: > 400 hoursStarbound: > 100 hoursDota 2: > 100 hours

I wholeheartedly reccomend this game. It's clear that the devs put a LOT of time into this game. The objective of the game is that you are the last survivor of your race, who were exterminated by the other races dure to their oppression by you (your race). As the last survivor of your race, you don't want to see the other races to fall to the same circumstances you did, so you set about creating a galactic federation (or just choose your favorite, and kill everyone with them, while still calling it a "federation"). The game in itself is extrordinarily detailed, as you are very powerful, still having (most) of your races tech, and as a result, you use these powers/tech to try and manipulate the galaxy to your will (you can't directly change much, but you can manipulate other races to do your bidding, or subvertantly destroy the economy/medical system/police force of an entire race. In the end, it's a very detailed and very fun game. Oh, I forgot about spaceship combat, it's probably the funnest part. Usually you vs around 10 enemies initally, then as the game progresses, it's you against 20k ships (although it takes a very long time to get to that point). It's hard for me to describe it in any more detail, but if you are a RTS fan, i'd highly reccomend this game.

A really interesting semi-randomized space strategy game where you play a single person trying to keep the other races from killing each other long enough to unite them into a federation. Lots of replay value and the combat system is quite innovative.

A very interesting take on the 4x genre. Instead of being one of the major players for terretory and goods, you are a singel being who seeks to meet the diplomatic victory conditions of a standard 4x game. All the races are very distinct from each other and uniting them all under your banner will be difficult. It feels balanced game-play wise but also a little impersonal. Plain text and sometimes a screen shot of the race is what you get. Same problem as Endless Space in a way. Overall, good music, decent style and a decent amout of depth and a lot of replayability.

I enjoyed my first game (7 hours; I'm slow at these things). It was an unfamiliar and new approach toward space strategy/diplomacy simulation. Reminded me a little of a way-scaled-down Distand Worlds, but with a turn-based, tactical bullet-hell twist.

The diplomacy was interesting. Each race ran a different form of government, each having their own nuances you had to abide by to get things done. I found it cleverly crafted, and will play again, soon.

Replay-wise, it seems like it could do with more widescale star system generation (more planets, game modes, scenarios...), but it was an enjoyable and worthwhile experience, nonetheless.

tldr: half of a good game with some annoying bits that seem to take up all your time.

I'm a big fan of 4x games and strategy in general. This game makes almost no sense to me. Strategy seems a vague and ambitious term for this. You do your own thing and influence other civilizations in the vaguest possible sense in order to accomplish the feat of you, the civilization that was destroyed, starting a federation of the remaining others to win the game. You do this by being omniprescent through their development and literally nudging them in the direction you want.

The concept is interesting but the gameplay is slow and impotent in that decisions have very little impact on the civilization you are "manipulating" which gives very little differentiation in games.

Now, that out of the way. The battle. You spend 80% of your time manipulating and 20% enjoying the hell out of excellent turn based strategy.

The interface is surprisingly intuitive and the perks/abilities actually make a difference in combat. The strategy component is great, and aside from some short periods where you feel like you are grinding it really feels like the piece of this game that works.

That's the problem. You have here a 1/2 great game here. Bipolar in the worst of ways for a 4x, the strategy seems useless and the battles are great. This is like the exact opposite of Endless Space, and there is going to be some people who love it, and others who don't.

Bottom line: buy it on sale if you want a varient rogue type 4x. Not for everyone, don't expect a normal 4x or strategy.

Definately one of my top games of all time, Arcen updates regularly constantly improving the experience. New DLC features are in beta at the time of the review but even now they're worth it adding a wealth of new content to an already highly enjoyable experience. I reccomend watching Totalbiscuit's video on this game to see if you'd like it as it has a very interesting game mechanics.

The Last Federation, a small game with a big task.The game is something you would play when you got a lot of free time on your hands because games can go from minutes to hours to even days. With one goal in mind the whole game. Building a federation of eight different races in order to win. This game gives you several different ways on how to win or lose but the best way is joining forces with another race and working together to recruit or destroy the others.The game gives you a lot of responsibility of keeping order, working behind the scenes, even destroying the life style of other races.The game starts out pretty smoothly with its plot of you being the last of your kind and you want to change everything. So you high-jack a ship and take to the stars in order to create unity of the planets.Each races are extremely different of each other and siding with different races give you different bonuses as well.As the game continues on the game gets easier and harder as your option are opened up to you and the planets get stronger. But with luck your already have a whole federation to back you up.I played the game for a few days and I'm really loving it and look forward to play it a few more times since each game is different then the first. I recommend you pick up this under appreciated game and give it a try and see what the galaxy has in store for you.

I spent the first few hours dying and failing to form the federation. I couldn't figure out why until it occured to me that I was supposed to be manipulating other races against each other in order to give them the reason to form a federation with me.

I eventually succeeded with 4 races (Acutians, Skylaxians, Peltians & Evucks) in the federation, 1 race extinct (Boarines) and 2 races (Thoraxians & Burlusts) constantly fighting each other. After the race (Burlusts in my game) that emerged victorious from the war, I convinced the federation go after the victor by claiming that it (The Burlusts) were a warmongering race and that the race needed to go extinct.

I will write a further in depth review once I've spent more time playing this game. Of which I am of course enjoying. :)

A Jean-Luc Picard simulator for your home microcomputer, except you're a multi-headed aquatic space-dragon. Fly around in your overpowered flagship using the power of DIPLOMACY to try to stop the solar system imploding into war, while the not-Klingons get drunk and fighty and the not-Tyranids get hungry.

(Then get Betrayed Hope and Palpaltine it up, sowing chaos and devastation such that everyone is weak enough to backstab. Watch the fearful reverence of the last survivors as they realize they are all alone with a grinning abomination and its army of mindless drones. Then bomb them. Bomb them into atoms.)

About 50% bullet-hell shooter, but in discrete no-reactions-necessary turn-based time slices---which is a pretty awesome mechanic---and 50% showing up just how inadaquate every other 4X's diplomacy system is. Pure empire building doesn't make much of a showing, even in BH.

I picked this up again...and then remembered why I put it down. Pretty much the only complaint I have is the combat: the enemies are too damned tanky. It takes hours just to kill one guy. And god help you if you want to challenge the burlusts (a race in this game that is all about war). Your fingers will die before the god damned enemy does. You could decrease the difficulty, but even on normal, it takes so damned long, and nothing damages you. Why even have a combat sequence at that point?Other than that, the simulation aspect is pretty in depth, though it definitely seems species other than the warlike ones need constant babysitting. if you have it accelerated to x2 fast forward, a race is going to get wiped out before you even see the ships.The aspect of play, though, is unique. You play as something of an agent behind the scenes...except for whenever someone's getting attacked, because no one can defend themselves. You run around, and do diplomatic stuff. But, not too much, or else those you've united will form an alliance that's opposed to your federation...even though you were the one making them not kill eachother...yeah. I don't get it either.Talking about diplomacy: Each race has a drastically different diplomacy screens. So different you'd think they were from different games. And this would be fine if some of them weren't really clunky as hell. As mentioned above, if you want to talk with the burlusts, you have to commit to a 9 hour duel (as such, I almost always get everyone to gang up on them. they are such pain in the ♥♥♥). And the Peltions and their damned vote system. So few things give votes, and that's the only thing that powers their diplomacy. You need 300 votes to get them into your federation....you get .5 after taking out an entire pirate camp. And as mentioned, combat is this game's weakpoint.Sure it gives the races "flavor", or "personality" or whatever people call it now, but it sacrifices functionality.

Your first game you will not be doing sh*t and you will be messing around. Your second game will be literally just chosing a few random races to join your federation and wipe everything else out. Your second game will be protecting your favourite race and whatever other race is availible. Your 4th game will be trying to make your favourite commit genocide on all other sentient beings in the galaxy.

In this game you play as a space hydra, yes you heard me right, a SPACE HYDRA. And you can murder Aliens that look suspiciously like the alien's from the movie Alien. And you can orbital bombard robotic capitalists. And you can duel chicken-legged red guys. And you can shoot down spy probes belonging to paranoid telepathic aliens. And you can help space ewoks, yes I said ewoks, conquer the galaxy. And you can poison the Boarines who look like the ice beasts from stars wars episode 5. And you can give little grey men spacefaring technology. Or you could reunite the galaxy with the help of utopian robots.

Despite the fact that combat can get a little stale, I am really enjoying this game. Oh ya, not to mention that the devs will answer 99% of questions you ask of them on the forums. I mean seriously the devs are amazing and they ALWAYS provide post release support for their games. Not to mention the expansion DOUBLES the content for only around 8 bucks {Canadian}. YOU SHOULD BUY THIS GAME AND THE EXPANSION OR ELSE I WILL SEND SPACE EWOKS TO MURDER YOUR FAMILY.

The only negative I can think of other than the combat which is fun but gets stale, is the fact that the game is mostly abstract and sometimes you need to really get into it to enjoy it.

I love 4X games and I love the concept for this one, but I don't enjoy it :(

That's not quite completely true, a lot of the combat is great (when its not too grindy), but the rest of the game is just too dry and distant, I've tried hard but just I can't get into it.I think this is an awesome dev, and I think I love what they are trying to do, but in practice its just not my cup of tea.

So I feel the need to warn others, that this game sounds amazing in concept, but be prepared to do a lot of reading and learning and still possibly be confused about how to play or whats going on!

I ♥♥♥♥ing love this game. Once I got the basics down it seemed a bit short and somewhat easy (simpler playthroughs being completed in one sitting). But the achievements, multiple difficulty settings, and procedural generation lend hours upon hours of replay-ability to the title. If you're like me and wish more strategy games allowed you to manipulate AI players without crushing them into the dirt you need to play The Last Federation. Although crushing them into the dirt is still a viable option...

Well... I didn't really like the game, but I also don't regret buying it. I definitely see how some people might love it. Plus, it's really original (so, even when I have not enjoyed the game as a whole I liked discovering how the mechanics works). In addition the developer is a dedicated one so you can expect improvements & updates.

I blame Total Biscuit for me buying into this madness. The launch videos for it made me lose interest, but watching TB's "WTF Is..." of this game made me want to buy it. I was not disappointed. The game has replayability in that you can try and 'win' it in several different ways, so there's still reason to play it after beating it. It may not be the best replayability. I suspect few people will rack up 100+ hours of game time, but few games can claim that they can.

Overall, the game is a fairly unique concept (I've not even heard of a game like this before, but I'm not exactly winning trivia pursuit matches either), and executes it fairly well. If you want to try something different, I have to whole heartedly recommend this game.

Something to be warned about though, you kinda have to try to actually lose this game in strategic sense.